CEO’s review 2015

Significant year in the company’s history

For Solteq, the past year was highly successful and positive, marked with the achievement of significant strategic objectives. At the beginning of 2015, Solteq was a completely different company from what it is today.

During 2015, our client base, operations in Finland and abroad, solution offering and many other things developed favourably. We succeed in implementing our plans in line with our strategy, and we are extremely pleased with the outcome.

Some changes took place in the company’s ownership structure. A publicly listed company is open to new owners every day. However, the changes, which included the surrender of significant ownership in the company by two of its founding members, represented milestones that could be compared to being listed on the stock exchange.

The strategic development of Solteq into an international company that we started in 2010 has been systematic, and this work will continue in the future.

In terms of business operations, the merger with Descom Group Oy strengthened our development: we are a completely New Solteq and proud of it.

Competent people are our most important asset

We operate with our clients in areas that are practically always new and significant, often of critical importance to our clients. Almost without exception, the direct or indirect users of our services and solutions are the customers of our clients. Meeting their varied needs and expectations requires top expertise, innovation, new ways of thinking – and what the Finnish “sisu” is made of, i.e. determination, perseverance and resilience. We have brought together top class technical deep experts and talented customer relationship analysts. We have orchestrators who know how to run the show and introduce exceptional and unexpected innovations.

For Solteq, competent people are the company’s most important asset. It is the highly competent, dialogue-oriented professionals with constructive ideas in Finland, Sweden and Poland that take us forward and work for the good of our clients and their customers.

Towards the end of 2015, we started building an academy of our own to give our existing and new employees opportunities to develop into deep experts in their competency areas or find completely new career paths. At Solteq, the employees are given opportunities to continue their professional development in terms of both tasks and competencies in Finland and abroad.

The construction of a New Solteq started in autumn 2015. In this process, the focus has been on strengthening a new modern corporate culture and providing solutions that meet the needs of our clients and the end customers. The New Solteq is the result of a shared effort.

Reciprocity between us and our clients promotes development

Our success is based on long-term, trusted client relationships. During the merger process, we realised that the outcome would be a new entity that has shared basic values. We believe that the understanding and appreciation of the client needs, honesty and long-term collaboration in various areas will bring the best benefits and profits. In the end, the pursuit for instant win is in nobody’s interest.

Our clients help us and we help our clients. That is what partnership is made of. We look for and implement ideas that may never have been realised or that may have been tried many times without success before. The feedback that we receive from our clients daily, monthly and yearly helps us develop our everyday work and the solutions we provide. It also gives us ideas of what our shared future will be like: where to go and how.

The Annual Report is like a milestone at which we stop on the New Year’s Eve and look back at what we have achieved in the past year. It is also the time to thank our clients for a year that has seen mutual collaboration, joy and sorrow and shared solutions. We are much more knowledgeable and better informed than the year before.

Strategy becomes reality by doing

People say that the implementation of a strategy is difficult. It may be so, but thanks to our personnel and clients, we have progressed well and at a suitable pace before and during 2015. Making right decisions at the right time has also played an important role for us.

The process of defining a new strategy that we announced in autumn 2015 started towards the end of the year. The new strategy is based on much the same principles as the previous strategies. The core of our strategy is our commitment to all forms of digital commerce and the support of its growth. Our passion is to enable tasks, procedures and implementations related to digital commerce and improve customer experiences throughout the supply chain and in the various areas of commerce digitally or traditionally.

During the past few years, the role of international operations has strengthened in our business sector. Our aim is to increase the share of international operations significantly with both our current and future clients. Global digital commerce has no borders. It creates new forms of doing business, decentralises supply chains and makes them transparent.

During this spring, we will provide further information on the New Solteq’s strategy, goals and next steps.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our stakeholders and interest groups for the past year and for helping us make success happen. My special thanks are due to the founding members of our company. Their work has made the existence of Solteq and its development to the next level possible.